A national trucking fleet has landed a Pennsylvania state grant for nearly $500,000 to support its development of a compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling station in Beaver County, while Waco, TX-based Central Freight Lines Inc. recently purchased 100 CNG Freightliners trucks.

Also in Texas, Waste Management Inc. is trying out up to three Mercedes-Benz Econic NGT CNG refuse trucks as an alternative to the popular Cummins Westport natural gas engines.

In California, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority is establishing a plan to buy up to 900 CNG buses through 2016, and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) recently held a workshop to outline its proposed amendments for streamlining its alternative fuel conversion certification procedure for CNG and other fuels.

Beemac Trucking in Pennsylvania said it expects a two-acre, $7 million fueling and maintenance facility for its CNG fleet to open Sept. 15 for public and fleet vehicles. The unmanned station will be open 24/7 with a credit card swipe system. The station will service 40 Beemac trucks, 20 of which will be converted to run on CNG and 20 others dedicated as natural gas vehicles (NGV). The fleet will operate with 12-liter, 400-hp Cummins Westport NGV engines.

“The trucks will run 100% on natural gas,” said Beemac Senior Vice President Dave Dudo. The firm calculates that the CNG costs about $2/gallon equivalent of diesel, which currently is priced around $4/gal. “It is going to take some time for that to pay off, but in the long run it will,” Dudo said.

Beemac has been awarded $469,292 by the state under a Pennsylvania program to boost the use of natural gas in transportation.

In Texas, Central Freight has received a $17.5 million federal grant to subsidize its purchase of 100 CNG trucks, adding to a fleet of 14 CNG rigs it has been operating successfully in the Houston area, where it is also building a new CNG fueling station.

“We’ve seen the efficiencies that it brought Houston, so we’re ready to bring it to the other terminals, like Dallas-Fort Worth, as well,” said Mari Ellen Borowski, business development director for Central Freight.

In California, the proposed streamlining of CARB’s certification process would be limited to vehicles being converted to the same emissions standards as gasoline vehicles. Tim Carmichael, an official with the California NGV Coalition, said that’s a problem “because most natural gas conversions are done to meet a more stringent standard: to make the vehicles eligible for solo-driver HOV lane access and some incentive funding.”

CARB said it wants to update and simplify the application and approval process and reduce market barriers for small volume (under 4,500 annually) converters, along with preserving emission benefits.

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